A Confidential Source

By Jan Brogan

Book Overview

Disgraced investigative reporter Hallie Ahern attempts to rebuild her reputation at a tiny Rhode Island paper, only to find both her job and her life on the line after she personally witnesses a murder.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0892960078
• ISBN13: 9780892960071
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Mysterious Press
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.0" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

A New England Thriller!

Jan Brogan's A Confiedntial Source is the kind of mystery novel that you just can't put down. Here's why: 1) The main character, Hallie Ahern is deliciously flawed. She is just smart and gutsy enough to unravel the mystery, even with all her personal shortcomings. 2) Leonard of Latenight is the overnight radio talkshow host with an agenda to bring down the local government in a corruption scandal. He's a composit of the guy who fills these shoes on the AM dial in just about every town. And he steals the show. 3) Instead of Boston, New York, Hollywood, or Vegas, A Confidential Source is set in Providence, Rhode Island. This underrated town provides the perfect backdrop for a compelling mystery. It's the kind of city you want to know more about when the story ends. Filled with surprises at every turn, this investigative novel will keep you guessing to the end. Highly reccomended!

Journalistic Ethics in "A Confidential Source"

For reporter Hallie Ahern the road to redemption has taken her to Rhode Island and the Providence Morning Chronicle. She works out of a county bureau office in South Kingston and spends her days covering school board meetings, retyping press release and police reports, and other lightweight but needed articles. She still dreams of the big story but the big story blew up in her face once before and she constantly worries it could happen again. Dreams are what got her into trouble in the first place. Dreams that caused insomnia so severe that she became addicted to sleeping pills. And addiction she still fights and is very careful not to give into again. That battle quickly becomes harder when the owner of The Mazursky Market, Barry Mazursky, is gunned down while she is in the small convenience store. While she did not see the shooter put the bullet into Mazurky's brain, she knows exactly who did it. Moments before a large man in a parka had cursed her when she saw his face and there is no doubt he killed Mazursky. While she cared deeply about Mazursky and felt him to be a friend as she wrote in the paper for a lead story, the facts are that she really knew very little about him. After praising him extensively in print, it slowly becomes clear that Mazursky hid dark secrets. Assigned to continue to work the case by the editorial staff of the paper, she begins to discover pieces of information while asking why the police are stonewalling the case. Links to political corruption and a coming referendum of gambling appear and it seems many of the characters are using Hallie for their own ends. As she investigates, Hallie figures out this wasn't a simple robbery gone wrong, but a public execution designed to send a statement to certain individuals. She realizes this could her chance to break back into the big leagues and claim total redemption for her past sins. That is, if she doesn't miss the warning signs and get herself killed. Rich in detail and with somewhat stock characters, this novel works forward very slowly as Hallie pulls the pieces together. As in many cozy style novels, the pace is slow and the mystery is an ongoing theme but often not primary. Such is the case here, as Hallie deals with possible romantic entanglements with a handsome District Attorney among others, her own addictive personality, relationship issues, both professional and personal, and her ongoing debate with herself over her own past failures and triumphs. Hallie is a complex persona who seems to shift back and forth, waffling between the responsibilities of adulthood and a wishing for simpler things. With the focus so scattered across so many themes, the first two hundred pages of this novel read like an elaborate setup piece. But the final seventy-five to one hundred pages make the wait worth it as the novel begins to go. As the pressures rapidly mount, Hallie spends less wasted time with doubt and self-recriminations and becomes real to the reader as she reacts to

Providence has a New Sleuth

Once again Brogan, a former financial writer, has created a plot around monetary high-jinx and addiction. In her previous mystery, Final Copy, it was the giddy alliance of venture capital and designer cocaine. In A Confidential Source, it's the low-rent neighbors of scratch tickets and casino gambling. For the protagonist, Hallie Ahern, has lost her impressive position as a Boston investigative reporter, and relocated to low-end employment and low-rent addiction in Providence, RI. Brogan is always honest about the problem of economic temptation (an early work included an elegant Ponzi scheme, imaginary yachts, and the gullible folks of a sea-side town.) and isn't too delicate to give us a character on the margin financially, professionally and emotionally. Yet she treats her hapless protagonist with compassion and wry humor. Like Colombo, there is much more to Hallie than meets the eye. Beneath the vague dishevelment and the thrice-worn-this-week apparel is a tenacious and intrepid investigative journalist. The reader is drawn easily into her world without resistance and is carried along through a well-paced story to a satisfying conclusion The book buzzes with likely characters, not the least of which is the city itself drawn with an eye for local folk and foible.

Brogan, Please, More Hallie!

Although I love mysteries and thrillers, I only read a few each year. That's because I demand that a mystery have believable, well-developed, interesting characters and a fascinating setting. I picked up A Confidential Source because of the great review in Publishers Weekly, and from the first chapter, I was hooked by Hallie Ahearn. No cookie-cutter female sleuth there! Hallie is the genuine article. I love the fact that's she's--well, a little wacky, offbeat, funny as hell, and passionate about setting one part of the world right.

Great mystery with authentic reporter details

Unlike any mystery I've ever read, Jan Brogan's novel captures the pressure and anxiety of being a newspaper reporter on a big story -- pressure from sources, skepticism from editors, and the worry that you'll publish hundreds of thousands of copies of an error. I should know: I was a reporter for 10 years, most recently at a 350,000-circulation daily. Brogan's plot is smart and well imagined and completely believable. Brogan's hero, reporter Hallie Ahern, is the perfect depiction of a certain type of person drawn to the news business. Her life is empty except for her job, making her success or failure at work synonymous with happiness or misery. Brogan's wonderful writing lets you feel Hallie's desperation, puts you inside her head as she rationalizes her way into destructive decisions and takes terrible gambles. The whole time you're screaming for Hallie to make the right choice, yet you have the sinking feeling she won't. Still, you're rooting for Hallie to succeed because you know her ambition is a frantic attempt to repair serious emotional damage. I really have to disagree with the Booklist review above -- clues don't fall into Ahern's lap at random. She uses her persistence, leverage and moral appeals to persuade people to help her get the story. Like in the real world, much of the information provided to reporters is given to serve the provider's agenda, something Brogan explains in the narrative. I blew through this book in two days and am adding Brogan's first novel, Final Copy, to my TBR pile. I can think of more than a couple of bestselling authors who should yield their spots on the bestseller racks to well-written mysteries like this one. Buy this book.